Eric Pederson – Worship Director

A few weeks ago I brought this topic up during our community meeting as a worship team and it sparked a very good discussion. So I figured I could put it out on the world wide web to be immortalized and people that couldn’t be a part of that discussion could know what we’re thinking and discussing as worship/music leaders of Central.

The other thing I want to mention is that pretty much all of this is ripped off from Mark Batterson and his book “Primal”. So if you want to go further with this and think about it more that’s where I recommend you go.

So often as a culture in the church we have a tendency to get comfortable with how we are doing things. Our traditions become something that we are unwilling to change, thinking that we have come up with the best way to do it. Whether it’s worship, sermons, classes, or even what service we like to attend. And I’m not saying tradition is necessarily bad, but we can elevate tradition to the importance of scripture believing this is how God wants his people to do.

Mark Batterson contends that half of our brain was designed by God for creativity. He states

“If God is infinitely creative and we are not just created in His image but called to be conformed to His image, then creativity isn’t optional. Creativity is a dimension of spiritual maturity. To become more like the Creator is to become more creative”.

Now in dealing more with worship and God’s command to sing songs to him Batterson says,

“Have you ever noticed how many times Psalms tells us to sing a new song? That creative command is repeated no fewer than half a dozen times. (Psalm 33:3; 96:1; 98:1; 144:9; 149:1) Evidently God gets tired of old songs. He doesn’t just want you to worship Him with your memory; He wants you to worship Him with your imagination. Love isn’t repetitive. Love is creative.”

Wow, what a powerful message. We need to actively work towards worshiping Him in a new way and with new songs. Granted God has given us guidelines in the ways we can worship Him but that will need to wait till next blog.

<8D

I had a friend ask me the other day how I measure the success of worship. And while I told him about my practical thought process when I am in the middle of a set, that’s not what I’m going to write about. I want to look at why that question is so hard to answer to begin with. Most people would measure success based on how loud people sing or how engaged they are, which really is the easiest and most obvious way to do it. That measurement can also mean absolutely nothing.

“This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me” (Matthew 15:8-9)

From looking at Jesus’ words above, people worshiping from their heart is obviously important. So even if there is a whole stadium of 20,000 people throwing their bodies and voices into singing worship songs it can all be in “vain.”

But at the same time worshiping without our bodies isn’t enough to proclaim the greatness and worth of God. Bob Kauflin says it like this in his book Worship Matters.

“If I told my wife, Julie, that I loved her, but never looked glad to see her, never hugged her, and never demonstrated my affection in any concrete way, she wouldn’t be too impressed. We wouldn’t have much of a marriage either.”

Aaaaaand now for one of my favorite hard hitting scriptures from James.

“What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” (James 2:14-17)

While we are saved by faith, the expression of our faith is shown through our works. In much the same way while worship from the heart is what is truly important; the expression of our heart is shown through worshiping with our bodies.

But alas I don’t have scripture to directly backup that last point so that’s just my point of view. <8D

What is Worship?

Ever since I was probably 14 I’ve known that worship wasn’t just the music that was played on a Sunday morning. I distinctly remember a sermon explaining that worship isn’t a specific act, but a lifestyle that is lived for God. Pretty deep for a 14 year old boy but at the time it changed my life. So for the next few years I would be quoting those words to my peers in an attempt to get them to think further about their own lives and how they perceive worship.

Skip forward 7 years or so to another “worship awakening” moment. Now a pastor was telling me that we are worshiping things all the time in our lives. We as americans are known for sitting in front of a picture box for hours upon hours. We even configure the seating of our living rooms to face  the box and we base all our conversation around what the box shows us. We have people spending hours of their day  in a worship service with treadmills and stair climbers improving their god of self image and not spending any time in the True God’s word. Mothers and fathers change their entire lives to revolve around their little god’s every wants and desires but never pay any heed to their Heavenly Father’s desire to have conversation with them in prayer and meditation.

I guess the notion that americans don’t have idols goes out the window.

So if we are worshiping all the time we already have a lifestyle of worship. The question becomes what are we worshiping? At the time I didn’t really think about all the things in my life and what I might have been worshiping. Pretty typical eh? God shows me what is wrong with people as a whole but I never actually apply it to myself.

Slowly over time God began to reveal to me the importance of this issue. It started to become painfully clear to me that the time I put into things other than God was breaking the heart of God. And that he is a jealous God who has zero problems with taking those things away from me. And praise Him for doing so.

So because I am a natural worshiper. Because I naturally  put time, energy and money into things that are important to me. I need to make sure that I am above all, worshiping Jesus Christ my savior and redeemer. Who loved me enough to die on the cross so that I could spend an eternity with Him.

Or I could worship tv.